About Precise Business Solutions
Experience Across the Financial Reporting Chain
Accounting. Financial Reporting. Data. Controls.
Precise Business Solutions was built around a simple principle:
Financial reporting is only as reliable as the data, processes, systems, and controls behind it.
Our experience spans the financial reporting chain—from accounting and general ledger reporting to enterprise financial data, data lineage, controls, reconciliations, reporting processes, and regulatory scrutiny.
That perspective allows us to look beyond the final financial statement and understand how the numbers were actually produced.
Experience That Connects Finance and Data
Andersen Consulting
1996–2000Client Financial Management
Worked as an internal accountant and financial analyst within the Client Financial Management Group, providing accounting and financial management support for multiple consulting engagements.
Responsibilities included
- Accounting and P&L reporting for consulting engagements ranging from approximately $1 million to more than $15 million
- Engagement-level financial reporting and analysis
- Revenue and expense management
- Monitoring financial performance
- Supporting engagement leaders with financial information and analysis
This provided a foundation in accounting, financial reporting, and understanding how operational activity ultimately becomes financial results.
Bank of America
2002–2022Vice President — Funds Transfer Pricing
Worked within the Funds Transfer Pricing function, applying financing costs and benefits to business activity for purposes of general ledger accounting and financial reporting.
This role provided experience connecting underlying financial activity and financing economics to the general ledger and reported financial results.
Director — Treasury Middle Office
Worked in Treasury Middle Office with responsibility for derivative accounting in accordance with FAS 133 guidelines.
Responsibilities included
- Derivative accounting
- Balance-sheet hedge accounting
- Hedge P&L reporting
- Hedge effectiveness reporting
- Supporting the accuracy and integrity of reported Treasury financial results
This role added another layer to the financial reporting chain: understanding how complex financial instruments, accounting rules, and reporting requirements ultimately affect the general ledger and financial statements.
Executive — Treasury Data Management
The final role at Bank of America focused on enterprise financial data management and data integrity. The responsibility was to help ensure that balance-sheet data was timely, accurate, complete, traceable, and properly controlled.
Responsibilities included
- Data sourcing
- Data lineage
- Data quality and completeness
- Data controls
- Monitoring and exception management
- Visibility into financial data and results
- Traceability from reported results back to source transactions
- Understanding how data moved through systems and interfaces before reaching financial reporting
The scale was enterprise-wide, involving millions of data records and billions of individual data fields. The focus was not simply whether a number existed in a report, but whether the number could be traced, validated, explained, and supported by the underlying data and processes.
Regulatory Experience
Experience Under Regulatory Scrutiny
When regulators asked about the data, we had to prove the answer.
When OCC, SEC, or Federal Reserve inquiries or audits involved financial data quality, integrity, or auditability, the responsibility included assembling the working documentation necessary to validate the data and demonstrate how the reported information was produced.
That included tracing information back through the relevant data sources and processes, validating the results, and preparing the supporting documentation.
The role also involved personally representing Data Management in discussions with regulators—answering questions, explaining the data and controls, and demonstrating how the information could be validated and traced.
In other words, the responsibility was not simply to provide a report.
The responsibility was to explain and defend how the number was produced.
A Different Perspective on Financial Reporting
Many financial reporting problems appear at the general ledger or financial statement level.
But the root cause may exist much earlier in the process.
A number can be wrong because of:
- Source data
- Operational systems
- Data interfaces
- Data transformations
- Accounting processes
- Business rules
- General ledger interfaces
- Reconciliations
- Manual adjustments
- Reporting workflows
- Data-quality controls
- System or process dependencies
That is why our approach looks at the entire reporting chain:
The reporting chain
The objective is to understand not only what the number is, but where it came from, how it changed, what controls surround it, and whether it can be proven correct.
Why Precise Business Solutions?
Finance experience. Data expertise. Control discipline.
Precise Business Solutions brings together perspectives that are often separated across different teams:
Accounting
Understanding how transactions, accounting rules, reconciliations, journal entries, and the general ledger produce financial results.
Financial Reporting
Understanding how financial information is transformed into management, investor, and regulatory reporting.
Data
Understanding data sourcing, lineage, completeness, accuracy, interfaces, transformations, and traceability.
Systems & Processes
Understanding how operational systems and finance processes interact to create the information ultimately reported by the organization.
Controls
Understanding how organizations validate, monitor, document, and support the integrity of financial information.
This combination allows us to investigate problems across organizational boundaries rather than assuming the answer exists within the accounting function alone.
Our Approach
Trace. Understand. Validate. Diagnose. Improve.
Trace
Follow the reported number back through the general ledger, accounting processes, interfaces, operational systems, and source data.
Understand
Determine how the information moves through the organization and where transformations, assumptions, manual intervention, or dependencies occur.
Validate
Test whether the data, calculations, reconciliations, accounting treatment, and reporting processes support the reported result.
Diagnose
Identify the underlying cause—not simply the symptom that appeared in the financial statements.
Improve
Develop practical recommendations to improve accuracy, efficiency, controls, traceability, and confidence in financial reporting.
Can You Prove That the Number on Your Financial Statement Is Correct?
We believe that is a better question than simply asking whether the books are closed.
A financial result should be more than a number that reconciles.
It should be a number that can be traced, explained, validated, and supported.
When something doesn't reconcile, we don't simply adjust the number.
We work to understand why the discrepancy occurred in the first place.
Let's Find Out What's Behind the Numbers.
If you are dealing with reporting problems, data-quality concerns, a difficult close, system issues, control gaps, or questions about the reliability of financial information, let's have a confidential conversation.
Schedule a Confidential Consultation